People Like Us is the fault of England's Vicki Bennett, a prolific audio/video-scavenger who has released numerous recordings on the Soleilmoon and Staalplaat record labels. Bennett stitches together disparate patches of images and sounds sampled from BBC Television and Radio broadcasts, vintage recordings, and any pop-culture relic that might be lying about to form dazzling and cleverly intricate fabrics of sound and image. The results are often reminiscent of the "plunderphonic" work of John Oswald or Negativland with faint traces of the blasphemous naughtiness of Throbbing Gristle. Within a dadaist spirit, she lets her audiences dive into a surrealistic world made of bad connexions and untrue communications.
By manipulating patterns, syntax, moods, narrative elements, recurring icons and characters of a variety of movie genres, People Like Us (in collaboration with Tim Maloney) with their performance "Genre Collage" examine the concept of 'genre', creating a humorous, surrealistic, yet informative take on the original content of the used footage. The sound is partially taken from the films and partly from music holding corresponding messages, moods and lyrical content.
Since 1991 Vicki Bennett has been busy making CDs, radio, and av-multimedia under the name of People Like Us, animating and recontextualising found footage into collages with a perspective on popular culture that is as dark as it is witty. She has shown work at, a.o.,Tate Modern, The ICA, Sydney Opera House, Centre Pompidou, Sonar, CTM and The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
› www.peoplelikeus.org
Appearances:
› CTM.11 › LIVE: RESPONSE #1
› CTM.06
› CTM.03